New to Heavy Metal?

I: Subgenre Quickstart: Seven Albums

If you would like to get started with heavy metal with a quick 7 album overview, please see below for links and description. While these 7 albums do not comprise the whole of heavy metal nor a, they are milestones for their respected genre and could be used as a guiding post for further exploration. One could say, "I enjoyed Pagan Altar and want to find more doom," or "I am interested in black metal but couldn't get into Darkthrone." Having a baseline knowledge of the core genres and their sound helps one further explore bands and their albums. If you would like a Spotify playlist of the 7 albums below you can find that here:

Shreddit's Subgenre Quickstart Playlist

Subgenre Example Album Description
Heavy (1970s) Judas Priest - Sad Wings of Destiny (1976, UK) Heavy metal in the 1970's was an eclectic mix of hard rock most often featuring clean vocals but with a heavy guitar tone. The lyrics and themes for these albums included fantasy, emotions, and songs about heavy metal.
Heavy (1980s) Iron Maiden - Number of the Beast (1982, UK) Heavy metal in the 1980's was a further exploration of the sound of the 70's yet with an increased tempo from the sound of punk rock and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM). The vocals for heavy metal remained clean and the lyrics and themes for these bands continued to explore fantasy, emotion, and songs about heavy metal.
Doom Metal Pagan Altar - Vol. 1 (1982, UK) Doom metal gained popularity in 1980's when bands were inspired by early Black Sabbath and other slow heavy metal bands of the 1970's. Doom metal is canonically slow and centered around a low somber guitar tone. Doom metal's lyrics and themes include personal emotions as well as magic, occultism, and fantasy.
Power Metal Helloween - Keeper of the Seven Keys Part I (1987, Germany) Power metal began in the 1980's influenced by 70's heavy metal as well as speed metal of the early 1980's. Power metal's vocals are dramatic and operatic with its lyrics and themes embracing fantasy and mythology as well as songs about heavy metal. Power metal in the 1980's is split between a rough and gritty US style during the early 1980's and and a symphonic European variety during the late 1980's.
Thrash Metal Metallica - Ride the Lightning (1984, USA) Thrash metal combines elements of NWOBHM, speed metal, as well as the emerging hardcore punk sound into a genre characterized by fast tempos, aggressive drumming, and prominent guitar. Thrash metal's vocals are rough yet still understandable with its lyrics and themes dealing with personal struggle and cultural issues.
Death Metal Death - Leprosy (1988, USA) Death Metal began in the 1980's with a further exploration of speed and imagery. Similar to thrash metal but with more of an emphasis on speed and chaos, death metal embraced harsh vocals, double kick drumming, and quick time changes in their songs. Death metal's lyrics and themes are often horror based but also include religion, politics, or philosophy.
Black Metal Darkthrone - A Blaze in the Northern Sky (1992, Norway) Black metal is a nebulous underground genre that has its beginnings in the speed, thrash, and death metal genres of the 1980's but came to prominence in the 1990's with bands from Scandinavia and their use of theatric makeup and dramatic pseudonyms. Black metal's vocals are more shrieking in their execution with its production more rudimentary due to the embrace of home recording. The lyrics and themes for black metal include fantasy, philosophy, nature, and more famously Satanism. Black metal has come to adopt many varieties since the 1990's often mixing with all of the above genres.

II: Continual Exploration

III: Helpful Tools

  • Encyclopaedia Metallum: The Metal Archives - Massive catalog of bands and band information, this will be your new best friend
  • Rate Your Music - General music site that can be used to catalog your music collection/what you're generally listening to
  • Bandcamp - General music site that hosts digital downloads, sometimes merch and physical media.
  • Discogs - General physical media site and music database that you can use for cataloging your own collection/buy physical media as well as get info on specific releases.
  • The Metal Detektor - Aggregate search engine for labels and distros in the US, use for purchasing physical media or merch.

IV: General Review/Interview/Scans Sites

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